When the program launches this summer, families who rely on food stamps will be able to use them online for the first time and have groceries delivered directly to their doorstep.

A Limited Pilot Program

For now, this only applies to residents of Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Washington. If it works out, the practice will spread to more states.

The two-year program will start out with national online grocers like Amazon, FreshDirect and Safeway; regional chains like ShopRite and HyVee; and smaller, New York-only chains like Hart’s Local Grocers and Dash’s Market.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which administers the food stamp program, wants to see whether local or national grocers work best online, the USDA said.

What You Should Know About Food Stamps

Let’s pause for a moment and address a couple burning questions:

They’re commonly called “food stamps” because the government used to hand out booklets of stamps or coupons worth $1, $5 or $10 apiece. It was that way for decades, and low-income people used those paper stamps to buy food. These days, the stamps have been replaced by debit cards called Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) cards. The USDA renamed the $70-billion-a-year food stamp program SNAP, the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program.

Let’s face it: There’s a common misconception that people who use food stamps are lazy, and that they’re leeches on society. But in reality, many food stamps go to working people.

Before using their digital food stamps to buy groceries online, SNAP recipients will have a few things to consider. Mainly, they’ll have to pay for any online service or delivery fees, because their SNAP benefits won’t cover those.